Margaret McCartney: Christmas presents

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I work in Portugal but know some UK colleagues. I feel the patient-doctor Christmas gift culture is rather similar in both countries, though it has possibly changed more in the UK in the past couple of decades. Dr McCartney is spot on. We need more sense and sensibility back into medical practice and all its dimensions. We are not doing what we do to get presents at the end of the day, but sometimes a simple gift is just a materialisation of a warm human feeling of gratitude. And we feel grateful back for having the privilege of the human interaction medicine provides. That interaction is after all the only gift that matters and is received on a daily basis.

Margaret's 'it seems different when you are the patient' observation, is very true: and also complicated.

The reality of 'we are humans, we interact with each other, and it seems different if ...' is the thing that 'gets lost' when people write rules/guidance to cover this type of human-to-human interaction: problematic !